#45 Biostats & Clinical Trial Design, with Frank Harrell

As a podcaster, I discovered that there are guests for which the hardest is to know when to stop the conversation. They could talk for hours and that would make for at least 10 fantastic episodes. Frank Harrell is one of those guests. To me, our conversation was both fascinating — thanks to Frank’s expertise and the width and depth of topics we touched on — and frustrating — I still had a gazillion questions for him!

But rest assured, we talked about intent to treat and randomization, proportional odds, clinical trial design, bio stats and covid19, and even which mistakes you should do to learn Bayes stats — yes, you heard right, which mistakes. Anyway, I can’t tell you everything here — you’ll just have to listen to the episode!

A long time Bayesian, Frank is a Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. His numerous research interests include predictive models and model validation, Bayesian clinical trial design and Bayesian models, drug development, and clinical research.

He holds a PhD in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina, and did his Bachelor in mathematics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Brian Huey, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, Adam Bartonicek, William Benton, Alan O'Donnell, Mark Ormsby, Demetri Pananos, James Ahloy, Jon Berezowski, Robin Taylor, Thomas Wiecki, Chad Scherrer, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Elea McDonnell Feit, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Joshua Duncan, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, George Ho, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Raul Maldonado, Marcin Elantkowski, Tim Radtke, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin and Philippe Labonde.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Links from the show:

• Frank's website and courses: https://hbiostat.org/
• Frank's blog: https://www.fharrell.com/
• Frank on Twitter: https://twitter.com/f2harrell
• COVID-19 Randomized Clinical Trial Design: https://hbiostat.org/proj/covid19/
• Frank on GitHub: https://github.com/harrelfe
• Regression Modeling Strategies repository: https://github.com/harrelfe/rms
• Biostatistics for Biomedical Research repository: https://github.com/harrelfe/bbr
• Bayesian Approaches to Randomized Trials, Spiegelhalter et al.: http://hbiostat.org/papers/Bayes/spi94bay.pdf
• Statistical Rethinking, Richard McElreath: http://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/
• LBS #20, Regression and Other Stories, with Andrew Gelman, Jennifer Hill & Aki Vehtari: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/20-regression-and-other-stories-with-andrew-gelman-jennifer-hill-aki-vehtari
• David Spiegelhalter, The Art of Statistics -- Learning from Data: https://www.amazon.fr/Art-Statistics-Learning-Data/dp/0241398630
• Confidence intervals vs. Bayesian intervals, E.T. Jaynes: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/confidence.pdf